Dan is the author of three best-selling books, keynote speaker, professor, leadership strategist and is the founder of The Pontefract Group, a firm that improves the state of leadership and organizational culture. He has spent 25 years in the corporate and public sector space as an executive developing organizational culture, employee engagement, and leaders at firms such as TELUS, SAP, Manulife, TD Bank, AT&T, and the Government of Canada among others.

Dan really loves to talk. So much so, he completes about 50 or so keynotes and discussions a year based on his books, research, and professional experience. Every talk is tailored to the audience.He has delivered his unique presentation style of humour, analogies, metaphors, stories and wicked graphics to the likes of business executives and team members in Europe, America, Australia and of course his home country of Canada.

Mike Domitrz:Welcome to the Respect podcast. I’m your host Mike Domitrz from Mikespeaks.com where we help organizations of all sizes, educational institutions and the US military create a culture of respect. Respect is exactly what we discuss on this show. So let’s get started.

Mike Domitrz:Guest, Dan, is the author of three bestselling books, keynote speaker, professor and leadership strategist, and is the founder of the Pontefract Group. A firm that improves the state of leadership and organizational culture. He has spent 25 years in the corporate and public sector as an executive developing organizational culture, employee engagement and leaders at firms such as Telus, SAP, Manulife, TD Bank, AT&T and the government of Canada, among others. He is Dan Pontefract. Dan, thank you so much for joining us,

Dan Pontefract:Mike. It’s such a pleasure. Thanks for having me today.

Mike Domitrz:Absolutely. We’re going to dive right into it because you have several books. One of them is about purpose, so let’s dive right into what’s the relationship between purpose and respect?

Dan Pontefract:Gosh, isn’t it everything? I love where you’re coming from in terms of respect and what a ultimately this planet needs more of. But then when you buttress that with purpose, it’s sort of world’s number one two punch, isn’t it?

Mike Domitrz:I agree. But I could see a lot of people going, “Why? What his purpose have to do with respect?” So how do you explain that connection, that interrelation?

Dan Pontefract:Well, purpose is, for me at least, the combination of three questions. What do I want to be when I grow up? Who am I trying to become and how do I want to be known when I leave a room? So when you think about those, what, who and how questions, that comes back to your center of gravity. That comes back to your core. For me, whether you are a parent, or a neighbor, or a leader, or a CEO, or an executive assistant, those types of questions then relate back to whether or not you respect yourself in the pursuit of purpose and whether you respect others in said pursuit of purpose. Because if you lack purpose, you’re ultimately lacking respect for yourself and others because you are steamrolling, or you’re ignoring, or you’re failing to consider the empathy of someone else and so forth. To me, I think there’s an inextricable link between the two.

Mike Domitrz:All right, so if somebody is listening, “Wait a second, I go to a job that I don’t feel is my calling. I don’t know when and I never have. I’ve never felt I’ve a purpose, a calling. How am I being disrespectful?” How do you answer that Dan?

Dan Pontefract:Everyone can first of all demonstrate respect in their role, in their way of life. Let’s go back to the question specifically, Mike, about your place at work. Maybe you don’t like the job. Maybe you don’t like the mechanics, the processes, the things that you are supposed to do eight to four, nine to five, whatever it is. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t glean aspects of that environment in which to treat others with respect, including and probably starting with yourself. If there’s no so-called calling, which is not what I intend to synonymously discuss as purpose, that’s different. Right?

Dan Pontefract:I think then that’s a more existential question about why are you in that role. If it’s horrible, if you’re there just for a paycheck, well it’s time for a life check and get out and find ways in which to sort of fuel your purpose and start treating yourself a little more respect. But if you’re in a role and there are portions of it that say that you don’t enjoy, well, where are you getting your mojo from in the other portions? Is it the comradery? Is it some of the customer interactions if you’re in such an example like that? And again, going back to your point and purpose about respect, how are you treating those interactions? What can you learn from those specific interactions to then fuel something else inside of your life, outside of your life?

Mike Domitrz:So when people are evaluating these questions, because you’re throwing a lot of questions out there, which is awesome. What is the relationship to respect and thinking itself?

Dan Pontefract:Today, The unfortunate part is we thought that perhaps technology would help us think more clearly, that the technology would help us be calmer, and that we’d be more patient and that we’d have more free time. In fact, it’s the absolute opposite. And the irony is dripping like a storm in the middle of winter here or up in Canada where I live in British Columbia. So you have your creative thinking, you have decision making type thinking, or critical thinking, and then you have the application of thinking. So that’s the doing part. We’re really good, Mike, at the doing. What we’re not doing however, is respecting the need for time to think. The time being the creative and the critical thinking aspects.

Dan Pontefract:We just gung ho go into action. We’re very good at it, but we’re addicted to it. Ergo, we are not respecting the fact that perhaps we need more time to marinate in the moment, more time to reflect, more time to dream, more time to respect the process of getting to action. Unfortunately, what you see with everyone’s stuffing their eyeballs into their mobile phones and their laptops ad infinitum, you have far too many phonetic people, you have far too many people who are disrespecting the process of better, good, creative, critical thinking.

Mike Domitrz:I think this is so true and we can all fall into it so easily. I believe you should have, and we’ve talked about this with other groups I’ve been with too, is this idea of do you have thinking time in your week now? Not everybody’s going to make time everyday for a set aside hour just to sit and think. But even to do it a few times a week to allow evaluation. Because what we tend to do is go, “Oh, I thought of a solution.”

Mike Domitrz:All right, but you didn’t actually pause and sit on it for an hour just to think. You went and did more things for an hour and came back to the exact same thought process you were in before. It was just confirming what you already thought. Whereas when you sit and think you actually may leave the original idea solution you had with a completely different one because that thinking allowed you to have new concepts come into your mind just through thinking, not by engaging in conversation, but just sitting in quiet.

Dan Pontefract:I could not agree more, Mike, in that fine and wonderful example and illustration. You are allowing the brain synapses to connect as opposed to almost disconnect. Again, if we’re not allowing that time to permeate new thinking, new ideas and potentially new decisions that come as a result of it, I argue again that that’s kind of disrespectful to your own professional status, to your own way of being. The myopia kind of sets in. The myopia being the tunnel vision or the horse blinders, as some might be aware of. When you have those blinders on, you’re not opening yourself up to these other wonderful possibilities. I think we are time bankrupt. We’re so stressed when it comes to our time and our management of time and our calendars.

Dan Pontefract:I do this a lot when I do executive coaching as a more concrete example, Mike. One of the first things I do is I make people open up their Google or their Outlook or their Apple calendar. And I say, “Okay, show me this.” Nine times out of 10, I kid you not, it is back to back to back to back to back to back with meetings, Monday to Friday, 8:30 to five, or whatever the time is. This is good in a sense you are having a lot of collaboration happening and there’s a lot of phone meetings and there’s a lot of face to face meeting. I said, “So where’s the breathing space to be creative, to respect the creative process? Where’s the decision making space individually or collected?”

Dan Pontefract:I don’t see any of these meetings that say, “Hey, we’re going to think about this as a team,” or it’s a planning strategy. It’s just meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting. That’s part of my bankruptcy comment is that we need to win back our time to respect the process of better thinking.

Mike Domitrz:Oh I agree. What’s interesting, if you look at my calendar several days literally have a block that say thinking time. That’s literally what it says. So I get this because I didn’t do it. You would say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll make time for that.” But if you don’t put it in there, something else will fill that time. That’s where it becomes so important. A lot of organizations struggle with this because your example is so perfect. They struggle with this concept of, “Well, we need meetings to have great ideas,” instead of we need silence sometimes to have great ideas.

Dan Pontefract:So again, when I’m doing the calendar exercise, then I show mine. Or even when I’m doing keynotes, I sort of show a screenshot of my calendar, a weekly calendar. To your point, I block off, because again the world is large and so you have different time zones, but I block off seven o’clock in the morning to 8:30 always. I block off four o’clock until six o’clock always. I also block off 12 o’clock to five o’clock Friday afternoon. To your point, I call it DP thinking time from the initials of my name.

Dan Pontefract:Those times, I do not take meetings. I do not answer my phone. I’m not looking at social media or whatever. Those are my reflection times and my critical thinking decision-making times. Because if I’m writing books, or planning workshops or planning executive- I need that time to be thinking as opposed to answering or responding or being in a meeting.

Mike Domitrz:Yeah. I want everyone that listening, whether you’re working in a corporate environment, working for yourself, maybe you’re an at home raising children, that thinking time, wherever you can find it, becomes so important. We need leaders to support that. So let’s dive into that. Why do you think leaders forget the important concept of respecting people’s space and just actually respect period they forget? I’ll talk to corporate leaders, they’ll be like, “Oh, respect is very important to us.” And I’ll go, “Well, where is it in your daily schedule? Where does it show up? Where do I see it being practiced? Where is it in everyday development?” Why do you think leaders so quickly forget about the practicing of respect in how you treat others and how you value others?

Dan Pontefract:Oh my gosh. I could go for another three hours on this question, but let me try to be succinct. So two key points here. The first is empathy. The second has to do with pace. On the empathy piece, I don’t know what’s happened since I guess the mid 70s. But there is a significant lack of empathy on behalf of leaders towards the common worker, the proletariat, if you will. That drives me bananas because you’ve got leaders who have worked their way up to some sort of leadership role, whether it’s leading a team, a unit, entire organization, and they’ve just completely forgotten how to empathize with the load, with the balancing of life, kids, soccer matches, et cetera, and the pressures inside of getting the job done.

Dan Pontefract:So we have not been able as leaders to put ourselves in the shoes of those that are below us, in a very hierarchical term there, to understand what’s going on their lives, their work lives. That’s a problem because by not putting yourself in the shoes of the common worker, you’re not able to truly understand those pressures. You’re not able to truly understand what’s making up their lives that’s causing such duress. So overall, I’d say we need to win back our empathy as leaders to better understand what’s going on in the lives of our workers.

Mike Domitrz:Yeah, and I would say if you’re a parent, you can practice that right in home life. A lot of parents forget. Am I being empathetic to what my child just experienced? What they tend to think is how do I fix what my child just, which is not empathy. That’s not empathy at all. We all tend to do it in leadership roles, whether it’s parenting or it’s corporate. How do I fix what that person did versus how do I have empathy for them in this moment? Because they’re going to be more embarrassed, frustrated, disappointed than anyone that that didn’t go well. It was their project. It was their decision.

Dan Pontefract:My beautiful, better half Denise and I are raising three goats as we call them. The kids are 16, almost 14 and 12, and girl, boy, girl. The middle guy suffers from a pretty extreme case of ADHD. From whatever we’ve known, nine years or so., we’ve forced ourselves as parents to empathize with the middle guy so that we better appreciate where his head space is coming from when he snaps or whether he’s a attention deficit in a particular situation, et cetera, et cetera. So I agree as a parent, whether it’s ADHD or otherwise, you can’t just jump off a cliff and berate your kid because they’ve done something wrong. You’ve got to put yourself in their shoes and say, “You have no prefrontal cortex right now. You have no executive function. There’s no ability for you to pause because that’s just the lack of brain development with these kids.”

Dan Pontefract:But to make my point analogously with leaders, imagine if leaders were pretending, if you will, that also adults have a deficiency with their executive function. And at times because of the load and the pressures and stress, et cetera, there is a lack of ability to withstand some of that pressure. That’s what leaders, like a parent, ought to do. What’s going on with that kid? What’s going on with that employee? That’s leadership to me. It really is Mike.

Mike Domitrz:Oh, I agree. 100%. that’s why when we live it 360, it makes it so much easier in the workplace, right? If you’re just trying to be respectful leader in the workplace, but you’re not one at home, odds are you’re not really a good one in the workplace. You just fake it really well because you’ve got to live it.

Dan Pontefract:Well, that goes back to, I’m Canadian, so I’m going to use a hockey metaphor here. But it’s applicable to basketball and to football and baseball. As a leader, are you playing for the name on the back of your Jersey or for the crest on the front? The crest on the front for me is your team or it’s your organization. I might have the captain C on the front of the crest here. I may be “the leader”, but going to send that elevator back down and I’m going to be there with you on the front line. I’m going to work with you. I’m going to empathize with the situation. We’re going to get this done as a team. I might take an accolade, but I’m also going to take the hit if we fail because it’s my responsibility. But I’m going to be there with you, and that’s what we need more of.

Mike Domitrz:Love it. You yourself were an athlete. You were on the National Soccer Team in Canada. Tell us about that.

Dan Pontefract:Well, with a couple of English parents and immigrating over from England to Canada, I guess I had some DNA in me naturally and not a lot of soccer players at the time in Canada. But the lesson I learned out of that actually was one that got me into leadership strategy, leadership development, leadership coaching for my entire career now that I’m turning 48 in a month. That was this short little story.

Dan Pontefract:So we’re at a national team training camp, and it was in preparation for the under 16 world cup at the time. A team of 30 kids from across Canada, and it’s the final day, and we get called into this auditorium because they’re going to tell you the makeup of the final team. Everyone’s excited. But we know that some guys aren’t going to make it. It’s been a week long training camp.

Dan Pontefract:So we sit down, the managers come out on the stage, they get to the microphone. They got a clipboard, and they start calling out the names of the boys that have made the team. So once your name was called, you come up on stage, you’d shake the hand of the managers and you’d walk off in this other room and you’d be vetted. So they take 18 kids.I was not one of those first 18 to be called. Kind of shock, chagrin, you’re sitting there and the manager comes back up to the mic and he says, “Better luck next time boys.” And he walks off the stage leaving these 15, 16 year old boys in a pool of misery and tears. I’m sitting there, Mike, and I’m staring at this guy and he’s just walked off and there’s 12 of us there in the room crying and wailing and mad.

Dan Pontefract:I get up and I walked to my dorm room. I packed my bag. At the time, my parents had a cottage about three hours away by car from the campsite. I decided to walk to the cottage and collect my thoughts and say, “What the hell just happened?” Not just I didn’t make the squad, but that how could anyone treat people that way, Mike? There’s certainly no empathy, certainly no respect to the point of your good work, and certainly no higher purpose. So that, as a 15 year old, 15 and a half, I was like, “Never again.” And that sent me into a 30 year journey, I suppose, into leadership.

Mike Domitrz:That’s powerful. A lot of us get into this because of something negative that happened that propels in that way. You turned it into a positive to help all those from experiencing that. Because you had also had an experience when you were asked to go home from work at 4:30 that also was an eminence of no respect. If you don’t mind, you had brought that up with me previously. Share that story.

Dan Pontefract:Yes. I’ve only recently gone on my own to help the world in leadership. And as you’ve mentioned, thank you by the way, I’ve had these kind of really cool and senior leadership roles in many different organizations. Anyway, this particular moment was week three of a new gig where I was the director of learning and sort of internal culture and external education services and so forth. But my boss, a VP, had also been hired the same time as I, which was weird. So HR had hired these two guys differently, different times. But we started the same week, and I reported into this new guy. We’ll call him Eric for the purpose of this story. So his desk and his EA’s desk in this kind of open concept arena was right beside an elevator.

Dan Pontefract:We were on the third floor of three floors. And the only way to get down other than going away on the other side of the building to the stairwell was to go down the elevator. It’s 4:30, and I walk past Eric and I’m about to go to the elevator. He looks up over his cubicle and he got my name, pronunciation wrong. And he’s like, Pontefract.” And I was like, “Okay, it’s Pontefract,” but whatever in my head, right? “Come here.” So I trups over to the cubicle area and he’s looking at me in this little pregnant pause. He looks down at his watch on his wrist and Mike, he says, “Hey, do you know what time it is?” And I don’t wear a watch, and I look at the fake watch on my wrist and I say, “It is half past four.”

Dan Pontefract:He didn’t know what that meant. I’m like, “It’s 4:30.” He was like, “Oh right. Exactly.” I’m like, “And?” Again, he looks at me and he’s like, “Don’t you think it’s a little early to be going home?” In my head, I’m thinking to myself, “Well that is an abuse of power.” But I’m like, “Okay, collect your thoughts, Dan, how do you turn this into a positive. New boss, right?” And I said, “Well actually I came in at 7:15 because I like starting early. What time did you come in today, Eric?,” knowing he came in at nine. He said, “Oh, you were here at 7:15?” I was like, “Yeah, and now I’m going to go home and I’m going to spend time with my newborn daughter Claire. Is that okay? Because I think that’s fair. I put it in nine hours.” And he’s like, “Oh I’m sorry.”

Dan Pontefract:It’s like, “Well I’m glad you went this way, but it could have gone differently. Couldn’t have?” So it was another kind of a egregious example where a leader is trying to assert power for some reason only to serve it’s own word, power. And I think, I hope, and I know Eric later one day said to me, “Hey, thanks for setting me straight there.” He was just a couple of years older than me as well.

Dan Pontefract:But again, it’s just a little capstone example where the disrespect at times that leaders think they need to exert because of their title, because that they have “a bigger budget,” the top of the ladder is where they ought to be perched so they’re going to have to bark orders. That’s the makeup of many people who think what leadership is. I think Eric got a very soft punch to the head by me to say, “You don’t have to act that way.”

Mike Domitrz:Why do you think that people get stuck into those systems of nine to five structure, versus are we getting the job done respecting what the person’s bringing to the table, versus are they following the rule?

Dan Pontefract:There’s a myriad of different answers to that. I think a couple, the first I would say is we’re still stuck in Taylorism. For those that are unfamiliar, a quick story there of Frederick Taylor, back in the early 1900s was the principal founder of something called the scientific principles of management. He had a stopwatch at Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania, and he started trying to find ways to make workers more efficient through essentially command and control techniques, like carrot stick stuff.

Dan Pontefract:Then as as World War I turned into World War II, and command and control of an army became the way in which to win, I’m using air quotes, those tendencies got picked up in some of the management training. Those tendencies then drifted into management structures themselves. You have just a one, two punch of Taylorism and command and control coming out of war.

Dan Pontefract:Then the third one, I’d say, historically was right about 1980 to be dead honest. That’s when a guy called Milt Friedman became the economic advisor of Ronald Reagan. When Reaganomics and Margaret Thatcher gleaned in and glommed on to everything we do in an organization is for profit and we fixate on the profit, then what happened was many leaders became addicted to taking whatever measures was necessary to ensure that profit was increasing. We lost our humanity. We lost, certainly, respect, Mike, of how to treat the worker and the culture of the team. So I think it’s been brewing and I think it’s exacerbated. And it’s wrong in my opinion, because we’re all on the journey to the waterfall, as I often say, we all end up six feet under. So why can’t we treat each other as human beings with a little more respect in how we operate?

Mike Domitrz:Absolutely. And you believe there’s a great lesson in Space Challenger versus Apollo 13 which I know is very off what we just discussed, but you believe this brings different types of respect to the discussion. So can you explain that, the different types of respect in discussing the Space Challenger versus Apollo 13?

Dan Pontefract:Yeah, sometimes in hindsight, tragedy is one of the best educators of empathy, of respect, of leadership. If you juxtapose those two challenges, in the Space Challenger example, we have an example whereby leaders at NASA were ignoring the pleas of both the contractors and those that were involved with the so called overing that eventually led to the challenger disintegrating before eyes. The the memos, and the pleas, say, “Look, this space shuttle cannot launch in below 50 degree Fahrenheit weather. Please wait until the afternoon when it gets warmer.”

Dan Pontefract:It was right in front of them, and leaders ignored it. They ignored the signs. They disrespected the opinion of others to be dead honest. Whereas if you kind of look at Apollo 13, it was no one’s fault what occurred in the lunar module and what happened up in space with a Lovell and team. What you saw, however, between Gene Kranz who was flight ops director, was this wonderful demonstration, whether you’ve read Kranz’s his version or Lovell’s version, or you’ve seen Tom Hanks in the movie Apollo 13. What you see is a demonstration of empathy, of collaboration, of listening, of respecting the fact that everyone has got an idea in which to bring these three men back, including the three men that are hurdling towards outer space.

Dan Pontefract:In these two kinds of NASA examples, you’ve got one, which was ironically earlier than the challenger one. You’ve got the Apollo 13 one that happened 15, 17 years before challenger example. But both of them tell you lessons about that listening, that empathy and respect of people. Because at the end of the day, again, aren’t we all on this for one reason. It’s just, “Have a good time and work together and enjoy life.” Why not listen to the opinion of others? Why not respect that so much that maybe the end result is in the case of Apollo 13 certainly much better off and we know what happened with the challenger situation.

Mike Domitrz:Dan, this has been so insightful. That was another great example. I want to make sure everybody knows your books. They are Flat Army, is one. The Purpose Effect is another. And Open to Think is a third. They can find you all at DanPontefract.com. Now it’s just like it sounds actually P-O-N-T-E-F-R-A-C-T, so DanPontefract.com. That’s the same with Twitter. It’s Dpontefract, Instagram is Dan.Pontefract. But all of that is at DanPontefract.com. We’ll have that all in the show notes. Thank you so much, Dan, for sharing your brilliance on purpose and respect and the whole relationship.

Dan Pontefract:Mike, thank you. And and really on behalf of the world, thanks for what you do at the Center for Respect. We need more Mikes in this world, dead honest.

Mike Domitrz:Well, thank you so much. That means a lot to me. For our listeners. You know what’s coming up next. That is question of the week. Before I answer this week’s question of the week, I’d love to ask you a question. Would you please subscribe to this podcast, the Respect Podcast with Mike Domitrz? By subscribing, you can make a huge impact. Now you might be wondering, “Mike, how does my subscribing to your podcast make a huge impact?” Well, here’s how. For every person that subscribes, it raises the rankings of the show in the search engines. So for people who care about respect like yourself, when they’re doing a search for podcasts, they’re more likely to find this show, thus providing an awesome opportunity for us to spread more respect around this world.

Mike Domitrz:All you do is hit subscribe under your podcast. Plus, the second benefit is by subscribing, you automatically get every episode right into your phone, or whatever device you’re listening to the podcast on. It happens automatically. So subscribing also makes your life easier. Now let’s get into this week’s question of the week. Oh, and by the way, you can always ask your questions of the week by joining us on Facebook in our discussion group. It’s called the Respect Podcast Discussion Group. Go there on Facebook and ask whatever questions you would like me to answer and or address in this segment of the show, and then listen to each episode to find out when your question is included. This week’s question is, Mike, do you believe in chivalry? My answer is no. No, I don’t. Now whenever I’ve said that to people who know me well they’re like what?

Mike Domitrz:You open the door for other people. You do things to intentionally make sure your helping other people. What do you mean you don’t believe in chivalry? Well, what you just described helping other people open the door for other people is that what chivalry is based on. Chivalry was based on this concept that one gender was two weak, so you open the door for them. You walk down the street to protect them on the street side. It was about gender power dynamics at play that played a big role in there, versus, yes, I open the door if I’m first to the door no matter who you are behind me because it’s a nice thing to do for all people. So if you believe something’s nice to do, you say, “Well I do that for woman because it’s a nice thing to do,” then why don’t you do it for all people?

Mike Domitrz:That’s my personal belief. You should do it for all people. Therefore that’s not about chivalry, that’s about being kind for all people. That’s something for me that is in alignment with my values and so instead of thinking of chivalry, I just think, “What’s the kind thing to do in this moment for anyone and everyone?”

Mike Domitrz:Do you know what I would love? I would love to hear your answer to this week’s question of the week. Would you please answer what your answer would have been if you were asked that question today on the show? All you do is go to our Facebook page. We have a special group where we have these discussions called the Respect Podcast Discussion Group. So the Respect Podcast Discussion Group and share with us what would your answer have been to this week’s question of the week. And if you take a moment, post us a new question for future episodes. What question would you like to hear me answer on an upcoming episode? That’s all done on Facebook in our special group, which is the Respect Podcast Discussion Group. Can’t wait to see you there.

Mike Domitrz:Thank you for joining us in this episode of the Respect Podcast, exploring work, love and life. This episode, like every episode, is brought to you by our organization, the Center for Respect, which you can find at centerforrespect.Company. And of course, you can find me your host, Mike Domitrz at mikespeaks.com. Thank you so much for joining us.